Preface to “Current and Future Topics on Prostate Cancer”
Prostate cancer management has evolved rapidly over the past several decades and the pace of change has particularly sped up over the past decade. The “hot” areas of research and innovation range from biomarkers to imaging to novel treatments for advanced disease. Between 7,000–12,000 new citations have been included in PubMed each year on the topic of “prostate cancer” for the past decade yielding a total of >100,000 new individual citations. This is a tremendous volume of literature for anyone to keep abreast of, let alone understand and use in clinical practice. The collection of superb review articles in this series of Current and Future Topics of Prostate Cancer is aimed at highlighting some of the most important areas of investigation in prostate cancer that are rapidly changing clinical practice. Each of these articles has been authored by experts in the field who are in most cases themselves driving some of this research. Some of the bleeding edge topics such as “precision prostatectomy” and prostatectomy for oligometastatic disease are forward looking and controversial. Management of gender minority patients is an emerging and highly important issue for prostate cancer which will need our attention and collective learning towards the unique needs of populations of gay and bisexual as well as transgender individuals. Exciting developments in the field of biomarkers and genomic sequencing of prostate cancer which have led to a better understanding of disease biology are discussed in elegant reviews. The new developments in prostate imaging such as MRI as well as nuclear tracer based techniques such as PET and their practical applications are the subject of separate articles. The plethora of new treatments being evaluated and rapidly coming online can be overwhelming to keep track of. Reviews on novel hormonal agents and strategies for sequencing of various therapies seek to provide a good understanding of this dynamic area of research in prostate cancer. We have enjoyed editing this series and have ourselves learned a lot from the excellent articles. We hope you will likewise find them helpful in furthering your understanding of prostate cancer and for your clinical practice.
Acknowledgments
Funding: None.
Footnote
Provenance and Peer Review: This article was commissioned by the editorial office, Translational Andrology and Urology for the series “Current and Future Topics on Prostate Cancer”. The article has undergone external peer review.
Conflicts of Interest: Both authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at https://dx.doi.org/10.21037/tau-2021-04). The series “Current and Future Topics on Prostate Cancer” was commissioned by the editorial office without any funding or sponsorship. BRK serves as an unpaid editorial board member of Translational Andrology and Urology. BRK and DWL served as the unpaid Guest Editors of the series. Both authors have no other conflicts of interest to declare.
Ethical Statement: the authors are accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
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